Welcome to the official website of Genius of Chang Dai-chien, a documentary film based on the life of the celebrated Chinese painter. Chang is widely regarded as one of the greatest Chinese painters in history; Hsu Pei-Hung—a fellow Chinese painter best known for his famous paintings of horses—describes Chang as “the greatest Chinese painter of the last 500 years.” During Chang's life, he experienced different stages that would eventally influence his art over time. He rose to fame initially for his immaculate reproductions of other painters' works, yet he would eventually find himself realizing the threads that together tie art, nature, and life. Ultimately, he would find himself, after decades as a prominent painter, still discovering more about art and re-inventing himself as a brilliant, original painter. Filled with the breadth and depth of a lifetime, he would emerge to become the acclaimed Chinese artist we know today.

Critics worldwide regard Chang Dai-chien as a passionate painter who transcended the world of art, whose passion allowed him to continue to reinvent himself throughout a lifetime, who pioneered new styles and new movements, and who inspires many worldwide.

San Francisco-based documentary filmmaker, Weimin Zhang, and her crew of filmmakers explore Chang Dai-chien’s life, through interviews with family, acquaintances, and experts, and through exploration of his life in archival footage as well as revisiting key areas, from his home in California all the way to his hometown of Sichuan in China, in order to allow us to look through the white-bearded sage mystique and explore deeply, in order to gain not only an understanding, but an appreciation, of who Chang really was and what his lifetime of art really means to the world today.